Mustard, Avocado & Cow Print

Holy cow, that was a long blogging break!  Spring has come and gone, wedding season is in full swing, my sister had a baby in Texas [of course I went to see her and take some newborn pics!], and we had a housewarming party.  So it's been a bit busy, to say the least.

The party we had was great for two reasons: friends we haven't caught up with in a long time were able to come over and see the house, and - as a little bonus - it got our butts in gear to finish up some areas. Namely, our living room.  Last I showed it to you, in this post, it looked like this:

 and now it looks like this!

 We picked a credenza [picked up at Ikea while I was visiting my sister], hung up some art that was previously on the floor, and switched out the tired pillows for fresh new pretty ones!

Pillows are a mixture of Target, Ikea, and hand-sewn by moi, with this fabric.  And I adore them :)

 [and if you look outside, you can see a glimpse of our newly-furnished patio, which I'll write a post about soon]

 I decided on a very clean, modern credenza as opposed to a vintage one, to keep a good balance of vintage & new.  I looked all around at local furniture stores, but found nothing.  So - Ikea to the rescue!  We splurged on one of their more expensive ones, in the Stockholm line, but it's very solid and has a lot of solid wood.  So I'm pretty happy with it [and especially happy about having an anchor on that wall, with dvd & record storage]

On the other side of the fireplace, we have a new [to us] chair!  If you follow me on instagram you may have noticed the new acquisition a while back [and if you're not following me, you're missing out on all kinds of pics of my dogs, food, and sometimes house photos!].  I wasn't planning on getting something so soon, but ended up finding this lovely lady at an estate sale, for a whole $65.  I don't mind the avocado color, but I'm set on a darker teal to offset all of the warm tones in the house.  That and the velour has some patches where it doesn't look so hot, aaaaand it kind of has a bit of a smell... So it's heading to the upholsterer soon!  And I'm SO. EXCITED.  I just love that chair :)  I just can't believe how it fits that corner perfectly! 

So keep watching for an update on the patio, my pretty and newly-styled bookshelves, and - sometime soon - a freshly upholstered vintage lounge!

Looking Slightly Less Abandoned

Since we bought the house, the front flower bed has looked, well, depressed.  Just a spot for leaves to gather and weeds to grow, except for the three cute little rose bushes [which until I trimmed them and cleaned mounds of leaves from their branches, looked depressed too].  She was easy to ignore, and kinda bummed out the rest of the entry with her sad sighs.

But now it's May!  Flowers are budding, the sun is out [so are my blindingly pale legs] and it's time I did something to cheer up the little flower bed.

Here she is before, collecting leaves, as usual:

 So I got some pretty perennial plants at Lowes.  Something that is a mounding plant for between the rose bushes, and a ground cover to disguise the weeds that will inevitably come up [and that I will inevitably always forget to pull].  I went with Alium, or German Garlic, that has a pretty silvery leaf, and purple flowers that I can. not. wait. to. see.

 And another silvery leafed ground cover, which I chose because it has a funny name.

I dug up a ton of weeds, pulled up that landscaping fabric [that stuff never works! and this just looked messy], plopped in the new plants, added pretty cypress mulch* and now she looks a little more loved:

Close to the porch, there's a big empty spot.  Eventually I'll pick a nice evergreen shrub, and get two, so I can plant one on the other side of the patio [symmetry ftw!].  But that's more of an intense decision-making process; I can't just go picking one that makes me giggle.  So more on that later. But it'll looks something like this:

And, assuming I don't kill all of the plants, I'll post pics when things flesh out, and if I see those pretty purple flower clusters!  And I gotta decide what to do with that awkward gap between the stone patio and the landscape edging that's *really* in there.  I'll keep you updated on that too :)

*it's not all cypress mulch, actually.  I bought one bag of cedar mulch at Lowes, got home, saw that I had grossly underestimated how much I needed, and this morning went to our local Ace for some more, since it's the closest.  They only carry cypress.  So it's a mixture of cedar and cypress, but it all looks the same, and I couldn't really care less.